However, their premise seemed to boil down to "See how horrible our ancestors ate, how could they have had such terrible taste, OMG, look at all the meat and sugar they're eating!"

Sugar? I know that the amount of meat in the "standard" diet varied a lot by time and place, but I thought that it was pretty well established that people now eat a whole lot more sugar than people in pretty much any earlier period. Which era were they looking at that had all the sugar?

I think the "This is how the era's diet is going to wreck your health this time." could be a nice antidote to the notion that "back then" people ate wholesome goodness and would have lived nearly forever if only they had modern medicine and why are we KILLING ourselves like this?

But if she's showing up within an hour of when you expect her and the meds are being administered, is that worse than even the best ER potential?

The difference is that I could choose when to start the ER experience, even if not the end. Christ, if she was late because she had a patient before me, I'd at least understand what I'm rolling with, but I'm the first person she sees!

Christ, I hate that the bar is so low that I'm gonna roll with it (or is that my inability to stand up for myself winning?)--waiting an hour for her to show after I've had to call and remind her to come in the first place, and then locking myself in my room so that I can avoid pushy nosy stressy conversations (I still ended up "punching in" two google searches for her as she tried to convince me of yet another five treatments, and even as I'm trying to be as accommodating as possible to get her out the door, she's insisting it's not spelt "Avsey" or whatever, and I need to keep typing in her latest bonnet-bee verbatim until the internet caves and just rolls with it too. She adds another 33% of the visit duration trying to guilt me into a new type of snake oil each week, and I'm just tired and it hurts and I don't want to hide from people in my own home.

Or something.

Which era were they looking at that had all the sugar?

The Elizabethan, their chef had a bowl of sugar and was talking about how it was used for preservation, and the hosts shook their heads disapprovingly. The doctors were talking about the fatty meats and small variety of vegetables.

edit: The Wartime Farm series is showing a lot about the sheer logistics of getting food to the nation and how they're getting millions more acres under the plow than they had before--and how they're getting rid of livestock because the animals were eating food the people could eat. The brief debate about keeping the dog was interesting. One host finally said, "We're keeping the dog, he's the smartest member of the team."

They're referring to all the government pamphlets the Ag Ministry and the Ministry of Food were putting out, and finding ways to scrounge feed for the dairy herd, plus looking at ways people gamed the system.

The snake oil thing, while annoying, you might just have to put up with, but her not remembering she has an appointment with you seems like the kind of thing you could complain about to somebody, if there is a stage of complaining between not saying anything and asking for another nurse. That's not right, and I know when I worked for a home health agency our nurses would not have been allowed to be that cavalier about scheduling.

What do you need it for? Tax prep, or general budget and asset management? I don't know how much the different tax softwares differ at the entry level--I use Turbo Tax just because I used it last year.

I mostly just want to be able to give receipts categories and notes so that I can use reports to find my deductibles. I do the tax forms by hand because the time I tried Turbo Tax it just made me want to cry.

It looks like I should give mint a try. I do still have my ancient version of Quicken on my old laptop if I hate everything else.

The snake oil thing, while annoying, you might just have to put up with

I don't know. Is there any way you can firmly, but kindly, tell her that it needs to be a quiet time, and that all of the new information is stressful, since your main objective is pain management? You might also mention that you've tried several different treatments, and for now this is what works.

Hmm. I think Elizabethans did use a lot more sugar than people in earlier times, but I think it would still be a pretty small amount compared to the average person now. Also, sugar would have been mostly for the upper classes -- it was too expensive for lower class people.

My beef with mint is is thinks it is "smart" and imports my bank transactions and automatically codes them. But it is actually pretty dumb and codes a lot of stuff wrong, so I have to check almost every transaction. It *cannot* macth checks at all, even for unusual amounts. And for some reason it thinks every $20 ATM withdrawal is a check made out to my niece. I mean, once we wrote that check, but I cannot teach it not to keep on coding it that way.

We are having a nice dinner, and the kids have dressed up to be our waitstaff, and Casper has written out our menu. Dillo is practicing standing with a "towel" (napkin) over his arm. He also just said he was trying to be as fancy as the Olive Garden, so I guess we need to take them out a little more.